We have been travelling quite a lot. (Picture: Shangrila-hotel, Penang, Malaysia) Always making sure that our final destination had the same anemities and comfort we are used from at home. Backpack-tourism is not for us. We don't find any humor in sleeping in a tent bitten by millions of mosquitos and whatnot...A few years ago, after 15 hours of flight we reached our vaction home - the picturesque half-Island of Penang, Malaysia. The Shangrila-hotel, which we had picked from a catalouge , turned out to be every vactioners dream - a tropic garden with pools and hot-tubs, shops, beauty spa, restaurants, nanny-services, business center etc..
At 07.00 am on the first day (we are known as an early riser) we took our towel, a book and went to the pool to get some much needed sun. Although the sky was cloudy the pool had comfortable bathtub-temperature. Perfect. However, we noticed that we were all but alone. We figured that the rest of the 800 guests was still asleep.
Some time after we had made ourselves comfortable we noticed that the hotel-personnel who had been cleaning the pool/garden suddenly abandoned what they had been doing. They were looking for shelter. We shook our head - strange people here in Malaysia, really.
We looked around.
Nothing out of the ordinairy, .....except out there at the ocean a white wall had formed. It looked like fog and it was slowly coming nearer. Well, we didn't care. It was warm, the fog would go away sooner or later....
A few moments later "the fog" had reached the garden and the heaviest downpour we ever have witnessed started. We seeked refuge under a sunshade but it did little to save us from the wet. It only lasted 3 minutes. Then the clouds parted and the sun came through again - stifling hot.
We stayed there 3 weeks.
Every time we saw the locals running for cover we did the same. After all those Malaysians were not so strange people after all. They knew a thing or two about sudden tropical monsoons...
